My philosophy on Chinese food is simple…  there is no such thing as good Chinese food, just levels of bad Chinese.  So when Cory decided for his birthday dinner to go to his favorite Chinese restaurant in the valley, I didn’t have a huge hope for culinary brilliance.  Boy, was I wrong.  Flo’s Chinese was by far the best Chinese restaurant I had ever tried.  From the lettuce wraps to the honey beef, everything we ordered and shared with each other was phenomenal.  I just need to find a way to get my parents on the east side of town to try it out.

I’ve always considered myself to be a math person, so I should have realized this bloggin’ everyday thing would eventually lead to a large number of posts.  However, when I noticed a few days ago that I was approaching the big 5-0-0, it was more of a suprise than it should have been.  Let’s not tell Mr. Laduke (my HS math teacher) that I’ve slipped so far down the arithmatic chain, k?  With my ankle propped up and icing (see, Mom, I am taking care of myself) I spent a few hours this evening reading back again through the last year and a half of my life, and as much as I’m still Laurel, I find hope in the growth and change that has happened.  So to commemorate this slightly momentous posting occasion, I thought I’d share back with you five of my favorite/truest/funniest posts of our time together.

5)  Happy Birthday, Spacewolf!  (Zac’s 25th Birthday video)

4) My mom’s love of telling time, my dad’s ADD confessions, and Zac’s pranks… humor… and awesomeness.

3)  The time I was called a lesbian, saw Ryan Adams and The Cardinals, John Mayer, Ingrid, the Crows and Matty Nay to name a few, fed the masses, begged my bffs take over, and celebrated my 27th in style.

2) Written back at the beginning of the great CaresTeam departure/Laurel moving out on her own.

Change is still headed my way. I’m still gonna have moments of complete and utter collapse, and what needs to happen in the next few months will still overwhelm me. But, I’ve stopped playing the reality peek-a-boo game because I know that time marches on whether or not you want it to. For now, let’s go ahead and schedule a time this fall where we can all sit back and laugh at my drama queen distress today. We’ll watch the Arizona sun set as we sip iced tea, and I won’t be offended when you remind how we all knew deep down… it would be okay.

Say it with me now… you were right. It was/ok better than ok.

1) The great Charlie abduction, ransom note, detective work, and New World Order video.

While it seems too soon after my trip to SD to ask for time off, I headed to Willcox last night for the next four or so days.  You see, my mom’s finally having foot surgery, and while I’m confident she doesn’t need me there… I need to be there.  It’s a daughter thing.  There will be no guest bloggers this time around.  I couldn’t bear to have to ask another favor of them, so you may just have to wait for new posts if there is no internet to steal at my parents’ house.  Unless that is, I creep in the Super8 parking lot and steal their internet.  I wonder if that would make me a ‘webmo’. Hmm…

I never miss my hometown more than I do in the fall. At least once a year, Mom and I head out to Apple Annie’s for peaches, handmade goodies and the best apples in Arizona. A few more miles down Ft Grant Road and you can go on a hayride, pick the perfect carving pumpkin, and purchase tons of other homegrown vegetables. This year for the first time Apple Annie’s has created a massive corn-maze, the largest in our fine state.  When Zac told me about it, I was amazed at the detail an eighteen-acre field.  So if you happen to be heading east past Tucson and need a fun family activity, take a detour past my hometown and see what Apple Annie’s has to offer.

I’ve been back from Montana almost two weeks, and it seems like forever since I was there surrounded by people I love.  Work has been just that… work.  Hours have been long.  Lists of things that HAVE to be done just continue to grow longer, and I haven’t really had a moment to let my trip really digest.  But, the truth is I’ve been semi-dreading the moment when I have to line up all the reasons I didn’t want to go and the ways I was so greatly mistaken.

It had been five years since I had traveled to visit my grandparents.  In that time, grandma had had a stroke, and to be honest I had done the grandma who says mean things because of her illness and was more than wary of dealing with it all over again.  It’s amazing the excuses we make and build for ourselves when we want to, “too busy at work”, “too busy with Cares”, “too understaffed at work” and “Flagstaff would crumble if I were to leave”.  But with a little encouragement and accompaniment from Zac and a list of rules to keep me out of trouble from my mom (No cleavage, perfume, unladylike language, and shoes in the house), I did what I’d be dreading for months and stepped on that plane.

In a flash it was seven days later and I hugged my family goodbye and walked with Zac down that airport walkway with tears in my eyes at the realization of how wrong I had been.  My time with my grandparents was a time I’ll forever cherish.  There was no moment where I regretted being there.  The days were not as boring as I had been warned they’d be.  We played rummy after breakfast and sat on the porch and talked after dinner.  We played Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and some other hideous game Zac made us play.  We laughed and listened and reconnected.  One afternoon as I was doing dishes and grandma was showing me where things went, she asked about my job.  After a quick, ‘Wal-Mart’ explanation of what I do, she asked if I liked it.  “I love it,” I gushed.  “Well, it sounds downright scary to me,” she replied with a laugh in her voice, “as long as you’re happy.”

Of course, our worlds were different.  They wake up every morning before six and would prefer if we were up to.  They like cereal and milk in the mornings before my eyes want to open, and quiet, bland restaurants when I like Mexican and Thai.  We both love fish, but they like Friday Fish Fry Dinners at 2pm, and I prefer sushi.  I check my email on my cell phone, and they rock the Earthlink MailStation.  Yet, when it comes down to it, the walls I thought divided us and made our paths uncrossable were just the details that make us unique individuals in this family.

As I look back on my time there, there’s one moment that sticks out.  It was the last afternoon we were there and grandma had disappeared. I walked to the end of the hall to see if she had gone to take a nap, when she appeared out of her bathroom.  She told me she wished we could stay longer but understood I had to go home to work.  We joked about the joys of being an adult and having to pay bills and be responsible.  In a moment of vulnerability, I confessed that I feared I was a much better kid than I was an adult.  She patted my arm and said, “I think you’re doing a mighty fine job at being an adult,” and walked away as I fought back the tears at her approval.  With all of my fear and worry about how my grandmother and I would get along, my time with her was the time I wouldn’t give back for anything.  I’m very aware that both of my grandparents won’t be here forever, but it’s nice (as selfish as it may be) to have happy memories at the end of the story to cling to and carry on with.  Because despite the ups and downs and distance literally and figuratively, we have been and always will be family.

Even as a child one of my favorite places to visit was my aunt and uncle’s ranch in southeastern Montana.  There’s something about driving out into the middle of nowhere and then going fifteen more miles down a unkempt dirt road that reminds you we’re all still small in this big world.  Imagine living miles from your mailbox, neighbors, and a store to buy a loaf of bread.  How about not traveling to civilization for weeks in the winter and traveling to school by snowmobile when the roads were too covered to navigate a truck.  It’s a different world then the one I grew up in, and yet every few years I find myself craving a retreat to this corner of land.  I ache to shed the technology and responsibility of my everyday life and recenter who I am and what’s really important.  In the days since I stepped off that plane in Mesa and drove back up the mountain, I’ve longed to return to the ranch.

Before I can really tell you about my trip, you have to allow me to gush about the gorgeous area I was in for most of my time away. The Black Hills of South Dakota have always been one of my favorite places to spend time, and with surroundings like these who wouldn’t want to get away there. At least once during every trip to see my grandparents in Spearfish, we drive through the canyon to a little cafe for the best breakfast north of Denver. Everyone at Cheyenne Crossing Cafe knows my grandparents by name and that warms my heart just a bit. Lucky for us, we had the time to really soak in the drive after breakfast and stop to enjoy the magnificent waterfalls found buried there. Zac and I had to hike a teeny, tiny bit to see this one, but it was so worth it. Especially when the group of foreign tourists came up to the creek right as Zac stepped into the arctic water with his feet clad in MY pink Crocs and howled. Good times…

It’s true… I have returned to the land of technology and have so much to tell all of you.  The past week has been one of the best and most thought-provoking weeks of my life, and going back to work today after nine days off was not easy.  I’m still trying to unpack, put my house back in order and digest the events of my trip, but I promise I do plan on sharing stories, pictures, and personal discoveries with you throughout the next week.

I’m posting from a picture message from my cell phone because I know I won’t be ready to divulge the details of my trip tomorrow.  More than likely, I’ll either be sleeping, cleaning, or pep-talking myself into returning to work on Monday after a 9-day (!!!!) hiatus.  I have so many stories, thoughts and pictures to share over the next week, but for now I’ll leave you with the lone image I took on my cell phone camera.

(I took this last night at around 8:15 pm.  Proving that we were all smarter than a 5th grader exhausted the grandparents… Or maybe it was putting up with their Arizona grandkids… hmmm.)

At 2pm today I am going further off theradar than I’ve ever gone before. I’m hopping on a puddle jumper with my brother and flying non-stop from Mesa, Az to Rapid City, SD to visit family and get away from this work world that has sucked me dry for the past six weeks. I’m both excited AND scared to be so far away from the world I’ve come to know. No laptop… internet… cable tv… days scheduled in 15 minute intervals… calendars of meetings… people looking at me expecting instantaneous, correct decisions. No one but my favorite cousin Evan knows we’re coming, and I’m really hoping everyone is excited as we are that we are descending on them for seven days as we are. Hopefully, old fears, battle scars, and goodbyes will finally be put to rest and relationships will be renewed and strengthened. Until then, I’ve spent some time making sure you’ll have new content here for the next few days. Wish me luck, and I’ll see ya in nine days!
P.S. I asked a few friends to ‘guest blog’ for me a few days while I’m gone. Treat them nice…

Confession #39: I’ve lived in Flagstaff for the past eight years and have NOT been to the Grand Canyon.

Don’t freak out.  I have seen the GC but not since I was ten years old. It seems that every time someone was going, I was working or too busy to tag along. So since The Bee had never been and the monsoons had squashed our idea of walking around anywhere, we found ourselves driving to the Grand Canyon on Sunday afternoon. Of course, our impromptu trip meant that I didn’t have either of my cameras, but Heather’s camera and my cell phone camera did a pretty great job.  Sometime in every one of your lives, you need to take the time and see this world wonder.  Despite my overwhelming fear of heights, you can’t help but sit as close to the edge as possible and observe the beauty of our Creator.

It’s that time of year again. Time to pack my bags and travel to some random North American university to hang out with three hundred fellow education geeks and play the game “Who’s the biggest nerd in the room?” This year’s ResNet Symposium is being hosted by the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada, and it should be an awesome trip. For those of you who may not be familiar with ResNet, it’s the group of IT professionals on university campuses who provide support and education to students on their campus. It stands for Residential Networking and is my primary focus within our campus.  Once a year, hundreds of ResNetters journey to meet up, discuss new ideas, share strategy, and work to build a support network between their schools.

The next six days will be quite the whirlwind.  My boss and I fly out of Phoenix this morning and arrive in Fredericton at midnight tonight.  We’ll be in conference sessions Saturday am through  Tuesday pm and fly home on Wednesday just in time to be back at work Thursday morning.  The area we’ll be staying near looks to be absolutely breathtaking, and the weather looks perfect with a few rainy moments.  Beyond conferencing, I get to go whale-watching in the Bay of Fundy. Yay!

My bags are packed (pink, of course), and my passport is itching to be stamped. Just as a heads-up, I won’t have cell phone service from this morning until Wednesday afternoon, so if I don’t respond, please don’t be offended. Email and Twitter will be my primary forms of communication. Don’t fear, I’ll still be blogging!!!

Most people have a very limited knowledge of their parent’s history. Their lives in our eyes are based upon spoken fables of walks in the snow and parental punishment and the knowledge of who they were during our childhood. This past weekend, Zac and I had the chance to go back in time with my parents to one of their first homes before we were born. After struggling to find the entrance hidden among new growth and twenty-five years worth of change, Grapevine Ranch came into view as we drove over the hills of Highland Road. While we couldn’t clearly see the house from where we were, we saw it perfectly through their eyes and stories. From humorous tales of having to break into their own home to the struggles of early married life, we gained a new perspective of the people who knew us best in the world, and that alone made our afternoon drive through the desert… priceless.

It’s been a sad while since I’ve been able to give this blogging-thing the respect it deserved, and to be honest, I’ve missed writing. Missed having an outlet to contemplate the state of my world. I even found myself on multiple occasions constructing posts in my head of things I wanted to write about or would discuss when I finally had the chance to do more than ‘just keep breathin’. Starting with that amazing Tom Cruise Scientology video… I mean, seriously, wth? Is he on something? Did he ingest too many of Morpheus’s red pills? At first I thought he had to be joking, but no, he’s dead serious. I had to giggle to keep from stabbing myself with a letter opener as he ‘humbly’ informed the world of his desire to help his fellowman. If you have taken the few minutes, please watch the video. Try and keep up with his acronyms; it’s more than a tad bit creepy, and I’ll pay money to anyone who can decipher his ranting.

Moving on, in case you haven’t gotten my not-so-subtle hints, the Packers my Packers are in the NFC Championship game on Sunday, and the best part… I get to be with my dad and brother to cheer them on (unlike this past week where I was stuck at work refreshing text in a web browser). I’m really not sure there’s enough space in the house for the three of us to watch the same game, but hopefully Brett will deliver one of his masterpieces and the post-game celebration will be that much sweeter because I will be with the two cheeseheads I love most. I probably should be concerned about the man-crush my brother has on Brett, but then again my dad and I feel the same way. Maybe the love is genetic? Then, the Pack will be heading to my neck of the woods for Superbowl XLII in Glendale, Az.

As for work… nevermind. Let’s not go there. It’ll just be easier on us all if that four-letter word is left alone. But, oh, oh, oh! Tomorrow night is Ryan Adams night. Jeff and I are leaving midday tomorrow to make sure we meet up with Zac in Tucson and get to will-call earlier enough to get in and see any surprise pre-set Ryan might deliver. Apparently, he played a five-song acoustic set in Tulsa on Wednesday before he and The Cardinals came out to start the show. All in all, he played something like 31 in his two sets. Maybe Zac’s 93 song dream setlist wasn’t so crazy. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Miss Sunflower and Come Pick Me Up. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more post-show.I’m harboring a few developing topics of conversation that should eventually materialize into posts in the next few days, so be prepared. As for anything else that needs to be said, TGIF (almost) and don’t forget to chant in chorus with me on Sunday… Go Pack, Go! Go Pack, Go!

I’m home… finally! Well, not home as in just walked in the door but have been in town for a few hours and have been happily enjoying time with my family. It’s been a long day, and I contemplated putting off today’s blog until tomorrow. But, instead here I am stealing wireless from a neighbor in order to faithfully post. I left Flagstaff this morning around 10am and eventually pulled into my parent’s driveway just before 6:00 this evening. That means it took almost 8 hours to drive around 330 miles. On a non-holiday Friday it should take anywhere from 4.75 hours to 5.25 hours to get to Willcox, however today was 8 long hours of cruisin’ along at 78mph or sitting in traffic at 3mph. There really was no middle ground. Needless to say, driving alone was just a bit boring. For awhile, I texted Lauren and talked with my cousin Evan in hopes of keeping my sanity but spent most of the trip was spent jammin’ out to the ‘drive home’ mix I had created on my iPod earlier in the week.

Because I suffer from musical A.D.D., the criteria for this mix was simple. They had to be songs that rarely, if ever, get skipped because of their high level of musical awesomeness. I’m sure sharing this list might set me up for public ridicule, but I love and find an immense amount of joy in each of these songs. I’m sure I could champion the merits of each song listed here and beg you to love them as I do, but instead I think I’ll just share the songs that turned an 8-hour drive today into my own personal Laurel-inspired musical. In no particular order, here they are…

1. Rissi Palmer – Anybody Out There
2. Sufjan Stevens – For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
3. Kim Richey – I Know
4. Willie Nelson – You Remain
5. Colbie Cailat – Realize
6. Damien Rice – The Blower’s Daughter
7. The Format – The First Single (You Know Me)
8. Teitur – Poetry & Airplanes
9. Tony Rich Project – Like A Woman
10. Nicole Nordeman – I Am
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